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Online CPD

Raising Grades at GCSE Citizenship Studies

This CPD session will provide teachers an opportunity to work with our experienced ACT Teaching Ambassadors.

About this event

All teachers strive to ensure their students achieve the best results possible in their GCSE Citizenship examinations. This CPD session will provide teachers an opportunity to work with our experienced ACT Teaching Ambassadors, who will be on hand to offer their experience and guidance for each of the examination board specifications (OCR, Edexcel and AQA).

In this 90 min workshop there will be a chance to explore the examiners report and discuss the implications for each examination board. The session will advise on examination techniques and how to embed this into your pedagogy across the school year to ensure that students are confident by the time they sit their exams.

There will also be a discussion around effective learning and revision techniques, such as retrieval practice, and going beyond just factual recall to really challenge students’ understanding. Additionally, we will examine how as teachers we can best plan to ensure our curriculums allow for the best progression for our GCSE students. 

Please note this workshop will not focus on the Citizenship investigation element of  GCSE Citizenship Studies as this will be covered in full by a separate CPD later in the year.

Who is it for?

This workshop will benefit those teaching GCSE Citizenship Studies.

Why attend?

By the end of this workshop you will: 

  • Develop your understanding of exam technique
  • Have a greater understanding of the examiners report from your examination board
  • Work with a community of teachers who share your experiences

Additional information

This workshop will support the CCF and ECF through discussion and analysis with expert colleagues in the following areas:

  • Reducing learning distractions (e.g. keeping the complexity of a task to a minimum, so attention is focused on content).
  • Breaking complex material into smaller steps (e.g. using partially completed examples to focus pupils).
  • Identifying possible misconceptions and planning how to prevent these forming.
  • Linking what pupils already know to what is being taught (e.g. explaining how new content builds on what is already known).
  • Designing practice, generation and retrieval tasks that provide enough support for pupils to experience a high success rate when attempting challenging work.
  • Balancing exposition, repetition, practice and retrieval of critical knowledge and skills.
  • Providing opportunities for all pupils to learn and master essential concepts, knowledge, skills and principles of the subject.
  • Planning activities around what you want pupils to think hard about.
  • Including a range of types of questions in class discussions to extend and challenge pupils (e.g. by modelling new vocabulary or asking pupils to justify answers).

CPD strand – GCSE Network

Building on our current strong network of GCSE teachers, we have developed a bespoke strand for members who teach GCSE Citizenship Studies. The focus of sessions will include improving outcomes for the Citizenship Investigation (active citizenship), examination technique, and opportunities for teachers to support each other with moderation of assessments.

Event team

Meet the team who will be running this event

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Zoe Baker

Head of Education and Professional Development

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Steven Humphrys

ACT Ambassador- North West

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Sera Shortland

ACT Ambassador- East Midlands

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Bryden Joy

ACT Ambassador- South East

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Daryl Henson

ACT Ambassador- North East

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Terri Barry

ACT Ambassador

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Kelly Allchin

Assistant Principal, Leeds City Academy

FAQs

These are some of the questions we are most often asked about our training sessions. If you have other questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch and we will be happy to help.